IBA gets a front row seat to the latest manufacturing developments @ Smart Manufacturing Week
Last week, our colleague Sam mentioned he was attending his first ever industry tradeshow and what an event it was! Three of us were at Smart Manufacturing Week supporting clients, checking out the competition, and listening to the speaker sessions.
This year we were lucky enough to sit in on a few really good speaker sessions at the Smart Factory and Maintec expos, including some led by our clients! They’ve helped fuel our content pipeline with new talking points and given us a behind-the-scenes look into how many manufacturing companies are navigating the latest AI changes.
So without further ado, we’ve gathered the thoughts from the IBA team on the ground to break down our tradeshow session highlights:
The stats don’t lie – it’s clear data quality is an AI sticking point: Samuel Walker, PR Executive
There was an alarming Gartner stat I read recently that by 2026, organizations will abandon 60% of AI projects unsupported by AI-ready data. So, it came as no surprise to find the main message from the first session I attended which explored the AI data journey was Garbage in. Garbage out! Even the most advanced AI systems are only as good as the data it’s fed on. With the manufacturing industry being fed a flood of raw data, this session looked at the complex journey data needs to take from factory sensor to AI actionable insight. It’s not simple as data needs to be captured, processed, cleaned, stored, and analyzed first! This session will definitely be helping to fuel future content as AI data quality becomes the sticking point for many industries. Nice to see that this session was a sell-out!
The power of customer case studies
In one of the final sessions I attended at Smart Factory Expo, I heard directly from a customer in the leisure vehicle space who had achieved a successful change management transformation (actually with our client’s help – nice!) using the Toyota Kata method. Remember lean manufacturing pioneered by Toyota? Well, this spawned a continuous improvement methodology and the company explained how it was able to improve operating margins by aligning manufacturing metrics.
Customer proof points are the perfect way for businesses to showcase their work in action. Showing they really can talk the talk and walk the walk!
All eyes on Human-AI collaboration: Hannah Watson, PR Lead for Analytics
Industrial AI has exploded onto the scene this year, with every company wanting a piece of the action, and it’s fair to say that amidst this digital frenzy, many companies have overlooked the vital role that humans still play in manufacturing excellence. This was a key area that the session I attended by a company in the connected worker space wanted to address. Unlike many of the other sessions that my colleagues and I sat in on, this presentation wanted to hone in on the specific business areas where AI is already delivering results – operations, maintenance, and learning and development – and stress that all of these new gains wouldn’t be possible without human support.
AI plays a crucial role in transforming unstructured content into a usable format but its success is reliant on humans providing the contextual understanding and hands-on expertise. In one particularly compelling example, the speaker explained how companies can use AI to transform knowledge-sharing by recording experienced workers completing complex tasks and then using AI to automatically convert those videos into step-by-step digital work instructions.
AI needs the contextual knowledge and hands-on expertise to enhance productivity and preserve valuable institutional knowledge that only humans can supply!
The uncanny link between asset management and football – hear us out: Georgia Harris, PR Lead for Themes
Now, I’m no football fanatic. I’m so far from it. Truth be told, I know absolutely nothing about football beyond the premise of getting the ball in the back of the net. So, my first thought when I sat in on a session titled “The Premier League of EAM” was “Why didn’t Sam join me in this?”
But, when likened to asset management – a topic we have covered extensively in the energy, utilities, and resources (EUR) sector – my ears pricked, and the football-asset management similarities started to make sense. If you’re still wondering how the two relate, let me explain. In football, a manager wouldn’t wait for a player to get injured before monitoring their health and performance, so why would businesses wait for this in industry to happen to assets? In both scenarios, there is a constant strive for continuous improvement, performance efficiency, and optimum health. It’s where a reliable, comprehensive, and end-to-end enterprise asset management (EAM) solution takes the shine.
The session broke it down to this:
- Defense – closest to the goal and responsible for avoiding failures – this is your operations team
- Strikers – the golden players of the game, pushing for success – this is your maintenance team
- Midfield – the middleman that brings defense and strikers together and the game in control – this is your health and safety team
- Football managers – overall leadership and provider of direction – this is your ‘glorified’ asset manager
Much like football, effective asset management is a joint team effort. It requires collaboration, the ability to work in a team, and a reliance on performance data to ensure critical “goals” are scored!
Closing thoughts
A common thread was written large throughout these sessions at Smart Manufacturing. Despite AI’s huge ability to transform manufacturing processes and improve business outcomes, AI is no match for human value!
The IBA team at IBA International.
